The demand by users and the purchasing public that portable electronic devices, particularly mobile telephone devices, become increasing smaller and lighter while at the same time providing an increasing number of different functions in addition to the basic telephone communication functions places a premium on available surface space for the user interfaces necessary to carryout the intended functions and operations of the associated features. In addition, there is also a demand for larger size screens for displaying images and text, for example, text messaging and word processing or other mobile applications utilizing keyboard entry from for example, a QWERTY keyboard. This demand has required the manufacturer of such devices to design and develop innovative device enclosures capable of reconfiguration from one operative position to another to provide the necessary user interface to operate the device and to accommodate larger size screens and keyboards.
One such commonly known prior art electronic device enclosure, for example a mobile phone enclosure, is commonly know as the “flip” phone wherein the cover of the device is hinged to a main body element which carries a user interface relative to usage and the cover is “flipped” to open the device to make the user interface assessable to the user. The inside surface of the cover carries a screen to display alphanumeric characters, graphics, images and other representations common to such mobile phone devices and which are commonly known in the trade and by the consuming public. Although the “flip” phone enclosure configuration provides one method to expand the user interface surface and provide a larger screen display area while maintaining a relatively smaller size device enclosure compared to other mobile telephone devices wherein the user interface and the screen share a common surface area, it is not satisfactory to accommodate larger keyboards such as QWERTY and other well known keyboards.
Another prior art mobile telephone device enclosure as illustrated, for example, in FIGS. 1A-1C is the “slide” phone generally designated 10 wherein the cover 12 overlays a main body element 14 and is arranged for sliding engagement with the main body element 14. The cover 12 carries a screen 16 and may include keys 18 to carry out various intended functions of the device when the cover 12 is in its overlying operative position as shown in FIG. 1A. The device is configured to a second operative position when the cover 12 is slid by a user in the direction shown by arrow 20 to expose a surface 22 of the main body element 14 as shown in FIG. 1B wherein the surface 22 carries a user interface 24 which may be an arrangement of keys 26 in a desired pattern to carry out the intended function such as inputting a telephone number or entry of alphanumeric characters to the device in a well known manner. The device is returned to its closed operative position by sliding the cover 12 in the direction shown by the arrow 21. Although such “slide” phones provide ease of usage in changing from one operative position to another operative position, the increase in effective user interface area provided by prior art “slide” phones is not as effective as “flip” phones because of the limited movement of the cover 12 with respect to the main body element 14. As schematically illustrated in FIG. 1C, an overlap of the cover 12 and main body element 14 represented by the length 28 is typically a 50 per cent overlap and results in a hidden area 30 between the cover 12 and main body element 14 to maintain rigidity of the “slide” phone in its extended open position and thus the hidden area 30 of the main body element surface 22 is not available for usage as a user interface particularly a full keyboard, such as a QWERTY keyboard.
Additionally, the prior art electronic device “flip” and “slide” enclosures such as described above lack a multi-functional separate numeric keypad which would be useful with a QWERTY keyboard and as a communication keypad for example in a mobile phone.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide a portable electronic device having an enclosure that overcomes the limitations and disadvantages of the prior art portable electronic devices wherein one body element is arranged to move relative to another body element to increase the effective user interface area to accommodate a full function keyboard such as a QWERTY keyboard and a multi-functional numeric keypad useful with the QWERTY keyboard and as a communication keypad.